Bloody atrocities of fascist scoundrels. Nazi medicine: inhuman experiments on humans Torture of fascism

Interior Design 19.02.2023

Interior Design

This small, clean house in Kristiansad next to the road to Stavanger and the port during the war years was the most terrible place in all of southern Norway. "Skrekkens hus" - "House of Horror" - that's what they called it in the city. Since January 1942, the Gestapo headquarters in southern Norway have been located in the city archive building. Arrested people were brought here, torture chambers were equipped here, from here people were sent to concentration camps and to be shot. Now, in the basement of the building where the punishment cells were located and where the prisoners were tortured, there is a museum that tells about what happened during the war years in the building of the state archive.

The layout of the basement corridors has been left unchanged. There were only new lights and doors. The main exposition with archival materials, photographs, posters is arranged in the main corridor.

So the suspended arrested person was beaten with a chain.

So tortured with electric stoves. With the special zeal of the executioners, the hair on the head could catch fire in a person.

In this device, fingers were clamped, nails were pulled out. The machine is authentic - after the liberation of the city from the Germans, all the equipment of the torture chambers remained in its place and was saved.

Nearby - other devices for conducting interrogation with "addiction".

Reconstructions were arranged in several basements - as it looked then, in this very place. This is a cell where especially dangerous arrested persons were kept - members of the Norwegian Resistance who fell into the clutches of the Gestapo.

The torture chamber was located in the next room. Here, a real scene of the torture of a married couple of underground workers taken by the Gestapo in 1943 during a communication session with an intelligence center in London is reproduced. Two Gestapo men torture a wife in front of her husband, who is chained to the wall. In the corner, on an iron beam, another member of the failed underground group is suspended. They say that before interrogations, the Gestapo were pumped up with alcohol and drugs.

Everything was left in the cell, as it was then, in 1943. If you turn over that pink stool at the woman's feet, you can see the mark of Kristiansand's Gestapo.

This is a reconstruction of the interrogation - the Gestapo provocateur (on the left) shows the arrested radio operator of the underground group (he is sitting on the right, in handcuffs) his radio station in a suitcase. In the center sits the chief of the Kristiansand Gestapo, SS-Hauptsturmführer Rudolf Kerner - I will talk about him later.

In this showcase are things and documents of those Norwegian patriots who were sent to the Grini concentration camp near Oslo, the main transit point in Norway, from where prisoners were sent to other concentration camps in Europe.

The system for designating different groups of prisoners in the Auschwitz concentration camp (Auschwitz-Birkenau). Jewish, political, gypsy, Spanish republican, dangerous criminal, felon, war criminal, Jehovah's Witness, homosexual. The letter N was written on the badge of a Norwegian political prisoner.

School tours are given to the museum. I stumbled across one of these - several local teenagers were walking down the corridors with Ture Robstad, a local war survivor volunteer. It is said that about 10,000 schoolchildren visit the museum in the Archive every year.

Toure tells the children about Auschwitz. Two boys from the group were there recently on an excursion.

Soviet prisoner of war in a concentration camp. In his hand is a homemade wooden bird.

In a separate display case, things made by Russian prisoners of war in Norwegian concentration camps. These handicrafts were exchanged by Russians for food from local residents. Our neighbor in Kristiansand had a whole collection of such wooden birds - on the way to school she often met groups of our prisoners going to work under escort, and gave them her breakfast in exchange for these carved wooden toys.

Reconstruction of a partisan radio station. Partisans in southern Norway transmitted to London information about the movements of German troops, the deployment of military equipment and ships. In the north, the Norwegians supplied intelligence to the Soviet Northern Fleet.

"Germany is a nation of creators."
Norwegian patriots had to work under the strongest pressure on the local population of Goebbels propaganda. The Germans set themselves the task of the speedy nazification of the country. Quisling's government made efforts for this in the field of education, culture, and sports. Quisling's (Nasjonal Samling) Nazi Party, even before the start of the war, inspired the Norwegians that the main threat to their security was the military power of the Soviet Union. It should be noted that the Finnish campaign of 1940 contributed to the intimidation of the Norwegians about Soviet aggression in the North. With the coming to power, Quisling only stepped up his propaganda with the help of the Goebbels department. The Nazis in Norway convinced the population that only a strong Germany could protect the Norwegians from the Bolsheviks.

Several posters distributed by the Nazis in Norway. "Norges nye nabo" - "The New Norwegian Neighbor", 1940. Pay attention to the now fashionable technique of "reversing" Latin letters to imitate the Cyrillic alphabet.

"Do you want it to be like this?"

The propaganda of the "new Norway" in every way emphasized the kinship of the "Nordic" peoples, their unity in the struggle against British imperialism and the "wild Bolshevik hordes". Norwegian patriots responded by using the symbol of King Haakon and his image in their struggle. The king's motto "Alt for Norge" was ridiculed in every possible way by the Nazis, who inspired the Norwegians that military difficulties were temporary and that Vidkun Quisling was the new leader of the nation.

Two walls in the gloomy corridors of the museum are given over to the materials of the criminal case, according to which the seven main Gestapo men were tried in Kristiansand. There have never been such cases in Norwegian judicial practice - the Norwegians tried Germans, citizens of another state, accused of crimes in Norway. Three hundred witnesses, about a dozen lawyers, the Norwegian and foreign press took part in the trial. The Gestapo were tried for torture and humiliation of those arrested, there was a separate episode about the summary execution of 30 Russian and 1 Polish prisoners of war. On June 16, 1947, all were sentenced to death, which for the first time and temporarily was included in the Criminal Code of Norway immediately after the end of the war.

Rudolf Kerner is the chief of the Kristiansand Gestapo. Former shoemaker. A notorious sadist, in Germany he had a criminal past. He sent several hundred members of the Norwegian Resistance to concentration camps, is guilty of the death of an organization of Soviet prisoners of war uncovered by the Gestapo in one of the concentration camps in southern Norway. He was, like the rest of his accomplices, sentenced to death, which was later commuted to life imprisonment. He was released in 1953 under an amnesty declared by the Norwegian government. He went to Germany, where his traces were lost.

Near the building of the Archive there is a modest monument to the Norwegian patriots who died at the hands of the Gestapo. In the local cemetery, not far from this place, the ashes of Soviet prisoners of war and English pilots, shot down by the Germans in the sky over Kristiansand, rest. Every year on May 8, flagpoles next to the graves raise the flags of the USSR, Great Britain and Norway.
In 1997, it was decided to sell the building of the Archive, from which the State Archive moved to another place, into private hands. Local veterans, public organizations strongly opposed, organized themselves into a special committee and ensured that in 1998 the owner of the building, the state concern Statsbygg, transferred the historic building to the veterans' committee. Now here, along with the museum that I told you about, there are offices of Norwegian and international humanitarian organizations - the Red Cross, Amnesty International, the UN

10231

This small, clean house in Kristiansad next to the road to Stavanger and the port during the war years was the most terrible place in all of southern Norway.

"Skrekkens hus" - "House of Horror" - that's what they called it in the city. Since January 1942, the Gestapo headquarters in southern Norway have been located in the city archive building. Arrested people were brought here, torture chambers were equipped here, from here people were sent to concentration camps and to be shot.

Now, in the basement of the building where the punishment cells were located and where the prisoners were tortured, there is a museum that tells about what happened during the war years in the building of the state archive.
The layout of the basement corridors has been left unchanged. There were only new lights and doors. The main exposition with archival materials, photographs, posters is arranged in the main corridor.

So the suspended arrested person was beaten with a chain.

So tortured with electric stoves. With the special zeal of the executioners, the hair on the head could catch fire in a person.

I have written about water torture before. It was also used in the Archives.

Nearby - other devices for conducting interrogation with "addiction".

Everything was left in the cell, as it was then, in 1943. If you turn over that pink stool at the woman's feet, you can see the mark of Kristiansand's Gestapo.

Toure tells the children about Auschwitz. Two boys from the group were there recently on an excursion.

Soviet prisoner of war in a concentration camp. In his hand is a homemade wooden bird.

"Germany is a nation of creators."

Norwegian patriots had to work under the strongest pressure on the local population of Goebbels propaganda. The Germans set themselves the task of the speedy nazification of the country. Quisling's government made efforts for this in the field of education, culture, and sports. Quisling's (Nasjonal Samling) Nazi Party, even before the start of the war, inspired the Norwegians that the main threat to their security was the military power of the Soviet Union. It should be noted that the Finnish campaign of 1940 contributed to the intimidation of the Norwegians about Soviet aggression in the North. With the coming to power, Quisling only stepped up his propaganda with the help of the Goebbels department. The Nazis in Norway convinced the population that only a strong Germany could protect the Norwegians from the Bolsheviks.

"Do you want it to be like this?"

In 1997, it was decided to sell the building of the Archive, from which the State Archive moved to another place, into private hands. Local veterans, public organizations strongly opposed, organized themselves into a special committee and ensured that in 1998 the owner of the building, the state concern Statsbygg, transferred the historic building to the veterans' committee. Now here, along with the museum that I told you about, there are offices of Norwegian and international humanitarian organizations - the Red Cross, Amnesty International, the UN.

Auschwitz Auschwitz, Auschwitz-Brzezinka(PolishOswiecim-Brzezinka), more precisely - Auschwitz-Birkenau
(GermanAuschwitz-Birkenau) —
a complex of German concentration camps, located in 1940-1945. on South
Poland, near the city of Auschwitz, 60 km west of Krakow. In the world
practice, it is customary to use the German, not the Polish name, since it is it
was used by the Nazi administration, but in the Soviet and Russian
reference publications and the media are still
predominantly Polish is used, although more accurate German is gradually
comes into use.

Over 1,500,000 people, most of whom were Jews, were tortured
and were put to death in the Auschwitz camps. A museum was created on the territory of the camp in 1947,
which is included in the UNESCO World Heritage List

Above the entrance to the first of the camps of the complex (Auschwitz-1), the Nazis placed the slogan:
"Arbeit macht frei" ("Work sets you free"). The cast-iron inscription was stolen in the night
on Friday, December 18, 2009, and was found three days later sawn into three
part and prepared for transfer to Sweden, 5 men were arrested,
suspects in this crime. After the abduction, the inscription was replaced by a copy
made during the restoration of the original in 2006About 1,300,000 people, of which 1,000,000
were Jews, were tortured in the camps of Auschwitz, near
1,100,000 of them were killed. On the territory of the camp in 1947 was created
museum, which is included in the UNESCO World Heritage List.

Complex
consisted of three main camps: Auschwitz 1, Auschwitz 2 and Auschwitz 3.
Auschwitz 1

After this area of Poland was occupied by German troops in 1939, Auschwitz was renamed
Auschwitz. The first concentration camp in Auschwitz was Auschwitz 1, which later served as an administrative
the center of the whole complex. It was founded on May 20, 1940 on the basis of brick two- and three-story buildings.
former Polish, and earlier Austrian barracks. In connection with what was decided
create a concentration camp in Auschwitz, with the territory adjacent to it
the Polish population was evicted. This happened in two stages; first had
place in June 1940.
Then about 2 thousand people were evicted, who lived near the former barracks
Polish army and buildings of the Polish Tobacco Monopoly. Second phase
evictions - July 1940
year, it covered the residents of Korotkaya, Polnaya and Legionov streets. In November of that
In the same year, the third eviction took place, it affected the Zasole area. Activities for
evictions continued into 1941; villagers were evicted in March and April
Babice, Buda, Rajsko, Brzezinka, Broszkowice, Plava and Harmenzhe. Total were
people were evicted from the territory of 40 km², which was declared a sphere of interest
camps; auxiliary camps were set up here in 1941-1943
agricultural profile: fisheries, poultry and
livestock farms.

The first group of prisoners, consisting of 728 Polish political prisoners, arrived at the camp
June 14, 1940. Over the course of two years, the number of prisoners varied from 13,000 to 16,000, and by
1942 reached 20,000 prisoners. SS selected
some prisoners, mostly Germans, to spy on the rest.
The prisoners of the camp were divided into classes, which was visually reflected by stripes on
clothes. 6 days a week, except Sunday, the prisoners were required to work.
An exhausting work schedule and meager food caused numerous deaths.
In the Auschwitz 1 camp, there were separate blocks that served various purposes.
In blocks 11 and 13, punishments were made for violators of the rules of the camp. people by
4 people were placed in so-called "standing cells" measuring 90 cm x 90 cm, where they
I had to stand all night. Tougher measures meant slower
murders: the guilty were either put in a sealed cell, where they died from
lack of oxygen, or simply starved to death. Between blocks 10 and 11
there was a torture yard, where the prisoners, at best, were simply shot.
The wall near which the shooting was carried out was reconstructed after
war.
On September 3, 1941, on the orders of SS-Obersturmführer Karl Fritzsch, Deputy Camp Commandant, the first Zyklon B gas etching test was carried out in block 11, which resulted in the death of about
600 Soviet prisoners of war and 250 other prisoners, mostly sick. The experience was considered successful and
one of the bunkers was rebuilt into a gas chamber and a crematorium. Camera
functioned from 1941 to 1942 and then it was rebuilt into an SS bomb shelter. Subsequently, the chamber and crematorium were recreated from the original parts and
exist to this day as a monument to Nazi brutality.

Auschwitz 2
Auschwitz
2 (also known as Birkenau, or Brzezinka) is what is usually
imply when speaking of Auschwitz proper. In it, in one-story wooden
barracks, hundreds of thousands of Jews, Poles, Gypsies and prisoners of other
nationalities. The number of victims of this camp amounted to more than a million people.
The construction of this part of the camp began in October 1941. Total was
four building sites. In 1942, site I was put into operation (there were placed
male and female camps); in 1943-44 camps were commissioned
located on construction site II (Gypsy camp, male quarantine,
male, male hospital, Jewish family camp, storage facilities and
Depot camp, that is, a camp for Hungarian Jews). In 1944 they started
to the construction of the III construction site; in unfinished barracks in June and July 1944 lived
Jewish women whose names were not entered in the registration camp books.
This camp was also called "Depotcamp", and then "Mexico". Section IV never
was built up.New prisoners arrived daily by train to Auschwitz 2 from all over the occupied
Europe. The arrivals were divided into four groups.The first group, which accounted for about ¾ of all those brought, went to the gas chambers for several hours. This group included women, children, the elderly and all those who did not pass the medical examination for full fitness for work. Every day, about 20,000 people could be killed in the camp.Auschwitz 2 had 4 gas chambers and 4 crematoria. All four crematoria went into operation in 1943 . The exact dates of entry into operation: March 1 - crematorium I, June 25 - crematorium II, March 22 - crematorium III, April 4 - crematorium IV. The average number of corpses burned in 24 hours, taking into account a three-hour break per day to clean the ovens in 30 ovens of the first two crematoria, was 5,000, and in 16 ovens of crematoria I and II - 3,000.The second group of prisoners was sent to slave labor in the industrial enterprises of various companies. Since 1940
From 1945 to 1945, about 405,000 prisoners were assigned to factories in the Auschwitz complex. From
more than 340 thousand of them died from diseases and beatings, or were executed.
There is a famous case when the German magnate Oskar Schindler saved about 1000 Jews by ransoming them for
work in his factory. 300 of the women on this list ended up in Auschwitz by mistake.
Schindler managed to rescue them and take them to Krakow.The third group, mostly twins and dwarfs, went to various medical experiments, in particular to Dr. Josef Mengele, known by the nickname "angel of death".The fourth group, predominantly women, were selected in the "Canada" group for personal use by the Germans as servants and personal slaves, as well as for
sorting the personal belongings of prisoners arriving at the camp. Name
"Canada" was chosen as a mockery of Polish prisoners - in Poland
the word "Canada" was often used as an exclamation at the sight of a valuable gift.
Previously, Polish emigrants often sent gifts home from Canada.
Auschwitz was partially serviced by prisoners who were periodically killed and
were replaced with new ones. About 6,000 SS men followed everything.

Auschwitz 3

Auschwitz3 was a group of about 40 small camps established under
factories and mines around the common complex. The largest of these camps was
Manowitz, which takes its name from the Polish village located on its
territory. It became operational in May 1942 and was assigned to IG Farben. Such camps regularly visited doctors and selected the weak and sick for the Birkenau gas chambers.On October 16, 1942, the central leadership in Berlin issued an order to build a kennel for 250 service dogs in Auschwitz; planned
it was on a grand scale and allocated 81,000 marks. During the construction of the facility, the point of view of the camp veterinarian was taken into account and all measures were taken to create good sanitary conditions. They did not forget to allocate a large territory with lawns for dogs, built a veterinary hospital and a special
kitchen. This fact deserves special attention if one imagines that, simultaneously with this concern for animals, the camp authorities were completely indifferent to the sanitary and hygienic conditions in which thousands of camp prisoners lived. From the memoirs of commandant Rudolf Höss:

In the entire history of Auschwitz, about 700 escape attempts were made, 300 of which were successful, but if someone escaped, then all his relatives were arrested and sent to the camp, and all the prisoners from his block were killed. It was a very effective method of thwarting attempts to escape. In 1996, the German government declared January 27, the day of the liberation of Auschwitz, an official day of remembrance for the victims of the Holocaust.

Story

1941, March 1 - the first inspection
Himmler in Auschwitz. They were ordered to expand
the existing camp and the organization of the camp in Brzezinka.

1941, August 14 - died in Auschwitz
Catholic priest Maximilian Maria Kolbe, who voluntarily went to
death to save a comrade in misfortune, Sergeant Frantisek
Gaevnichek. Subsequently, for this feat, Maximilian Kolbe was ranked among
face of the holy martyrs.

1941, September 3 - by order of Karl
Fritzsch launched the first gas chamber in the camp. Test results
approved by Rudolf Hoess.

September 23, 1941 - they were in Auschwitz
delivered the first Soviet prisoners of war.

1942, July 17 - second inspection
Himmler of Auschwitz.

over Jewish and Gypsy women under the guidance of gynecologist Carl Clauberg. IN
experiments included amputation of the uterus and ovaries, irradiation, testing
drugs ordered by pharmaceutical companies.

1943 - medical experiments started
over prisoners under the direction of Dr. Josef Mengele.

1943, November - at the suggestion of Oswald Pohl
(head of the main administrative and economic department of the SS) camp
in Auschwitz was divided into three parts.

1944, spring - Himmler's third inspection,
after which he ordered the liquidation of all the gypsies in the camp,
having previously selected the workable ones.

1945, January 18 - part of the able-bodied
prisoners (58 thousand people) was evacuated deep into German territory.

January 27, 1945 - Soviet troops under
command of Marshal Konev entered Auschwitz, in which at that moment
there were about 7.5 thousand prisoners.

1946, April - at the entrance to the main
the crematorium was hanged by the first commandant of Auschwitz - Rudolf Höss,
issued to the Poles by the British.

1967 - on the territory of Birkenau was
an international memorial was erected to his victims. The inscriptions on it were made
in the language of the peoples whose representatives were martyred here. Is in that
including the inscription in Russian.

Experiments on people

Fragments of bones are still found in this earth. The crematorium could not cope with the huge number of corpses, although two complexes of furnaces were built. They burned badly, fragments of bodies remained - the ashes were buried in pits around the concentration camp. 72 years have passed, but mushroom pickers in the forest often come across pieces of skulls with eye sockets, bones of arms or legs, crushed fingers - not to mention decayed fragments of the striped “robe” of prisoners. The Stutthof concentration camp (50 kilometers from the city of Gdansk) was founded on September 2, 1939 - the day after the start of World War II, and its prisoners were liberated by the Red Army on May 9, 1945. The main thing that Stutthof became famous for was these are "experiments" by SS doctors, who, using humans as guinea pigs, made soap from human fat. A bar of this soap was later used at the Nuremberg trials as an example of Nazi fanaticism. Now some historians (not only in Poland, but also in other countries) are saying: this is “military folklore”, fantasy, this could not be.

Soap from prisoners

The museum complex Stutthof receives 100,000 visitors a year. Barracks, towers for SS machine gunners, a crematorium and a gas chamber are available for viewing: a small one, for about 30 people. The building was built in the fall of 1944, before that they had been "coping" with the usual methods - typhus, exhausting work, hunger. An employee of the museum, guiding me through the barracks, says: on average, the life expectancy of the inhabitants of Stutthof was 3 months. According to archival documents, one of the female prisoners weighed 19 kg before her death. Behind the glass, I suddenly see large wooden shoes, as if from a medieval fairy tale. I ask: what is it? It turns out that the guards took away the shoes of the prisoners and in return gave out just such “shoes” that erased the legs to bloody calluses. In winter, the prisoners worked in the same “robe”, only a light cape was required - many died from hypothermia. It was believed that 85,000 people died in the camp, but recently EU historians have been reevaluating: the number of dead prisoners has been reduced to 65,000.

In 2006, the Institute of National Remembrance of Poland analyzed the same soap presented at the Nuremberg Trials, says the guide Danuta Okhotska. - Contrary to expectations, the results were confirmed - it really was made by a Nazi professor Rudolf Spanner from human fat. However, now researchers in Poland say: there is no exact confirmation that the soap was made specifically from the bodies of Stutthof prisoners. It is possible that the corpses of homeless people who died of natural causes, brought from the streets of Gdansk, were used for production. Professor Spanner did indeed visit Stutthof at different times, but the production of "soap of the dead" was not carried out on an industrial scale.

Gas chamber and crematorium at the Stutthof concentration camp. Photo: Commons.wikimedia.org / Hans Weingartz

"People were skinned"

The Institute of National Memory of Poland is the same “glorious” organization that advocates the demolition of all monuments to Soviet soldiers, and in this case the situation turned out to be tragicomic. Officials specifically ordered the analysis of soap in order to obtain evidence of the "lie of Soviet propaganda" in Nuremberg - but it turned out the other way around. As for industrial scale - Spanner made up to 100 kg of soap from "human material" in the period 1943-1944. and, according to the testimonies of its employees, repeatedly went to Stutthof for "raw materials". Polish investigator Tuvia Friedman published a book where he described the impressions of Spanner's laboratory after the liberation of Gdansk: “We had the feeling that we had been in hell. One room was filled with naked corpses. The other was lined with boards on which the skins taken from many people were stretched. Almost immediately, a furnace was discovered in which the Germans experimented with making soap using human fat as a raw material. Several bars of this "soap" lay nearby. An employee of the museum shows me the hospital used for the experiments of SS doctors - relatively healthy prisoners were placed here under the formal pretext of "treatment". Doctor Carl Clauberg went to Stutthof on short business trips from Auschwitz to sterilize women, and SS-Sturmbannführer Karl Wernet from Buchenwald cut out people's tonsils and tongues, replacing them with artificial organs. Vernet's results were not satisfied - the victims of the experiments were killed in a gas chamber. There are no exhibits in the concentration camp museum about the savage activities of Clauberg, Wernet and Spanner - they "have little documentary evidence." Although during the Nuremberg trials, the same “human soap” from Stutthof was demonstrated and the testimony of dozens of witnesses was voiced.

"Cultural" Nazis

I draw your attention to the fact that we have a whole exposition devoted to the liberation of Stutthof by Soviet troops on May 9, 1945, - says the doctor Marcin Owsiński, head of the research department of the museum. - It is noted that it was precisely the release of prisoners, and not the replacement of one occupation with another, as it is now fashionable to say. People rejoiced at the arrival of the Red Army. As for the SS experiments in the concentration camp - I assure you, there is no politics here. We are working with documentary evidence, and most of the papers were destroyed by the Germans during the retreat from Stutthof. If they appear, we will immediately make changes to the exhibition.

A film about the entry of the Red Army into Stutthof is shown in the museum's cinema hall - archival footage. It is noted that by this time only 200 emaciated prisoners remained in the concentration camp and “then N-KVD sent some to Siberia”. No confirmation, no names - but a fly in the ointment spoils a barrel of honey: there is clearly a goal - to show that the liberators were not so good. On the crematorium there is a sign in Polish: "We thank the Red Army for our liberation." She is old, from the old days. Soviet soldiers, including my great-grandfather (buried in Polish soil), saved Poland from dozens of "death factories" like Stutthof, which entangled the country with a deadly network of furnaces and gas chambers, but now they are trying to downplay the significance of their victories. Say, the atrocities of the SS doctors are not confirmed, fewer people died in the camps, and in general - the crimes of the invaders are exaggerated. Moreover, Poland declares this, where the Nazis destroyed a fifth of the entire population. To be honest, I want to call an ambulance so that Polish politicians are taken to a psychiatric hospital.

As a publicist from Warsaw said Maciej Wisniewski: "We will still live to see the time when they say: the Nazis were a cultured people, they built hospitals and schools in Poland, and the Soviet Union unleashed the war." I would not want to live up to these times. But for some reason it seems to me that they are not far off. And it's not a secret for anyone that in concentration camps it was much worse than in modern prisons. Of course, there are cruel guards even now. But here you will find information about the 7 most cruel guards of the Nazi concentration camps.

1. Irma Grese

Irma Grese - (October 7, 1923 - December 13, 1945) - overseer of the Nazi death camps Ravensbrück, Auschwitz and Bergen-Belsen.

Among the nicknames of Irma were "Blond-haired devil", "Angel of death", "Beautiful monster". She used emotional and physical methods to torture prisoners, bludgeoned women to death, and reveled in the arbitrary shooting of prisoners. She starved her dogs to set them on her victims, and personally selected hundreds of people to be sent to the gas chambers. Greze wore heavy boots, and in addition to a pistol, she always had a wicker whip.

In the Western post-war press, the possible sexual deviations of Irma Grese, her numerous connections with the SS guards, with the commandant of Bergen-Belsen, Josef Kramer (“Belsen Beast”) were constantly discussed.

On April 17, 1945, she was taken prisoner by the British. The Belsen trial, initiated by a British military tribunal, lasted from September 17 to November 17, 1945. Together with Irma Grese, the cases of other camp workers were considered at this trial - commandant Josef Kramer, warden Joanna Bormann, nurse Elisabeth Volkenrath. Irma Grese was found guilty and sentenced to hang.

On the last night before her execution, Grese laughed and sang along with her colleague Elisabeth Volkenrath. Even when a noose was thrown around Irma Grese's neck, her face remained calm. Her last word was "Faster", addressed to the English executioner.

2. Ilsa Koch

Ilse Koch - (September 22, 1906 - September 1, 1967) - German NSDAP activist, wife of Karl Koch, commandant of the Buchenwald and Majdanek concentration camps. Best known under a pseudonym as "Frau Lampshade" Received the nickname "Buchenwald Witch" for the brutal torture of camp prisoners. Koch was also accused of making souvenirs from human skin (however, no reliable evidence of this was presented at the post-war trial of Ilse Koch).

On June 30, 1945, Koch was arrested by American troops and in 1947 sentenced to life imprisonment. However, a few years later, the American General Lucius Clay, the military commander of the American occupation zone in Germany, released her, considering the charges of issuing execution orders and making souvenirs from human skin insufficiently proven.

This decision caused a protest from the public, so in 1951 Ilse Koch was arrested in West Germany. A German court again sentenced her to life imprisonment.

On September 1, 1967, Koch committed suicide by hanging herself in a cell in the Bavarian Eibach prison.

3. Louise Dantz

Louise Danz - b. December 11, 1917 - overseer of women's concentration camps. She was sentenced to life imprisonment, but later released.

She began working in the Ravensbrück concentration camp, then she was transferred to Majdanek. Danz later served in Auschwitz and Malchow.

Prisoners later said that they were subjected to ill-treatment by Danz. She beat them, confiscated their winter clothes. In Malchow, where Danz had the position of senior warden, she starved the prisoners without giving food for 3 days. On April 2, 1945, she killed an underage girl.

Danz was arrested on 1 June 1945 in Lützow. At the trial of the Supreme National Tribunal, which lasted from November 24, 1947 to December 22, 1947, she was sentenced to life imprisonment. Released in 1956 for health reasons (!!!). In 1996, she was charged with the aforementioned murder of a child, but it was dropped after doctors said that Danz would be too hard to endure a re-imprisonment. She lives in Germany. Now she is 94 years old.

4. Jenny-Wanda Barkmann

Jenny-Wanda Barkmann - (May 30, 1922 - July 4, 1946) Between 1940 and December 1943 she worked as a fashion model. In January 1944, she became a warden at the small Stutthof concentration camp, where she became famous for brutally beating female prisoners, some of whom she beat to death. She also participated in the selection of women and children for the gas chambers. She was so cruel, but also very beautiful, that the female prisoners called her "Beautiful Ghost".

Jenny fled the camp in 1945 when Soviet troops began to approach the camp. But she was caught and arrested in May 1945 while trying to leave the train station in Gdansk. She is said to have flirted with the policemen guarding her and was not particularly worried about her fate. Jenny-Wanda Barkmann was found guilty, after which she was given the last word. She stated, "Life is indeed a great pleasure, and the pleasure is usually short-lived."

Jenny-Wanda Barkmann was publicly hanged on Biskupska Gorka near Gdansk on July 4, 1946. She was only 24 years old. Her body was burned, and the ashes were publicly washed away in the closet of the house where she was born.

5. Hertha Gertrude Bothe

Hertha Gertrud Bothe - (January 8, 1921 - March 16, 2000) - overseer of women's concentration camps. She was arrested on charges of war crimes, but later released.

In 1942 she received an invitation to work as a warden in the Ravensbrück concentration camp. After four weeks of preliminary training, Bothe was sent to Stutthof, a concentration camp near the city of Gdańsk. In it, Bothe was nicknamed "The Sadist of Stutthof" because of her mistreatment of female prisoners.

In July 1944 she was sent by Gerda Steinhoff to the Bromberg-Ost concentration camp. From January 21, 1945, Bothe was a warden during the death march of prisoners, which took place from central Poland to the Bergen-Belsen camp. The march ended on February 20-26, 1945. In Bergen-Belsen, Bothe led a group of women, consisting of 60 people and engaged in the production of wood.

After the camp was liberated, she was arrested. At the Belzensky court, she was sentenced to 10 years in prison. Released earlier than the specified date on December 22, 1951. She died on March 16, 2000 in Huntsville, USA.

6. Maria Mandel

Maria Mandel (1912-1948) - Nazi war criminal. Occupying the post of head of the women's camps of the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp in the period 1942-1944, she is directly responsible for the death of about 500 thousand female prisoners.

Colleagues in the service described Mandel as an "extremely intelligent and dedicated" person. The Auschwitz prisoners among themselves called her a monster. Mandel personally selected prisoners, and sent them to the gas chambers by the thousands. There are cases when Mandel personally took several prisoners under her protection for a while, and when they bored her, she put them on the lists for destruction. Also, it was Mandel who came up with the idea and the creation of a women's camp orchestra, which met new prisoners at the gates with cheerful music. According to the recollections of the survivors, Mandel was a music lover and treated the musicians from the orchestra well, she personally came to their barracks with a request to play something.

In 1944, Mandel was transferred to the post of head of the Muldorf concentration camp, one of the parts of the Dachau concentration camp, where she served until the end of the war with Germany. In May 1945, she fled to the mountains near her hometown, Münzkirchen. On August 10, 1945, Mandel was arrested by American troops. In November 1946, as a war criminal, she was handed over to the Polish authorities at their request. Mandel was one of the main defendants in the trial of Auschwitz workers, which took place in November-December 1947. The court sentenced her to death by hanging. The sentence was carried out on January 24, 1948 in a Krakow prison.

7. Hildegard Neumann

Hildegard Neumann (May 4, 1919, Czechoslovakia - ?) - senior warden in the Ravensbrück and Theresienstadt concentration camps, began her service in the Ravensbrück concentration camp in October 1944, immediately becoming chief warder. Due to good work, she was transferred to the Theresienstadt concentration camp as the head of all camp guards. Beauty Hildegard, according to the prisoners, was cruel and merciless towards them.

She supervised between 10 and 30 female police officers and over 20,000 female Jewish prisoners. Neumann also facilitated the deportation of more than 40,000 women and children from Theresienstadt to the death camps of Auschwitz (Auschwitz) and Bergen-Belsen, where most of them were killed. Researchers estimate that more than 100,000 Jews were deported from the Theresienstadt camp and were killed or died in Auschwitz and Bergen-Belsen, and another 55,000 died in Theresienstadt itself.

Neumann left the camp in May 1945 and was not prosecuted for war crimes. Hildegard Neumann's subsequent fate is unknown.